{"id":39690,"date":"2009-11-10T19:34:36","date_gmt":"2009-11-11T00:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crunchgear.com\/?p=123493"},"modified":"2009-11-10T19:34:36","modified_gmt":"2009-11-11T00:34:36","slug":"google-puts-free-wi-fi-in-47-airports-for-the-holidays-plus-they%e2%80%99re-matching-charitable-donations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/39690","title":{"rendered":"Google puts free Wi-Fi in 47 airports for the holidays (plus they\u2019re matching charitable donations)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.crunchgear.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/goog.png\" alt=\"goog\" title=\"goog\" width=\"620\" height=\"161\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-123495\" \/><br \/>\nWell, the spirit of giving arrived a little early this year! For my birthday last month, Google announced it was partnering to offer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2009\/10\/19\/google-gives-the-ultimate-holiday-gift-free-wifi-on-virgin-america-flights\/\">free Wi-Fi on all Virgin America flights <\/a>until January 15th. Great, thanks Google, now I have to check the feeds even while flying at 500MPH. But I guess that wasn&#8217;t enough kindness to satisfy the Goog.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;ve just announced that they&#8217;re going to be extending the free Wi-Fi to 47 entire <em>airports<\/em>. And not only that, but there&#8217;s a raft of giveaways, charity matching, and other nonsense in the bargain as well. I&#8217;m starting to think that it&#8217;s not &#8220;Don&#8217;t be evil&#8221; so much as &#8220;Give away enough stuff that people forget about the evil.&#8221; Maybe that&#8217;s disingenuous. In fact, I&#8217;m sure it is. Oh well, &#8217;tis the season for moral ambiguity.<br \/>\n<span id=\"more-123493\"><\/span><br \/>\nHere are the details, as briefly as I can state them.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All airports on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freeholidaywifi.com\/\">this list<\/a> have Wi-Fi right now. Except Sea-Tac, which is getting it later (just my luck).<\/li>\n<li>Google will match any donation (up to $250K) made via the Wi-Fi in one of the airports. The airport that has the most donations on January 15 will get a $15,000 credit to donate to a local charity of their choice.<\/li>\n<li>The service is provided by &#8220;Boingo, Advanced Wireless Group, Time Warner Cable, Electronic Media Systems, Lilypad as well as numerous airports that provide wireless services themselves.&#8221; i.e. Google is just paying the bill, everything else is the same.<\/li>\n<li>\nNo data is being collected besides the donation data (you&#8217;re not a guinea pig).<\/li>\n<li>At some point you&#8217;ll be able to submit a photo of yourself via the Wi-Fi in order to enter for a prize drawing. Okay&#8230;? That&#8217;s kind of weird. I guess &#8220;Don&#8217;t be creepy&#8221; isn&#8217;t in the Google charter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sounds good to me. If anyone finds a catch, let us know, but I think it&#8217;s pretty straightforward. More info at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freeholidaywifi.com\/\">Free Holiday WiFi<\/a> page, if you&#8217;re interested or feeling FAQ-y.<\/p>\n<p>Also, as commenter Harold points out, Yahoo! will be <a href=\"http:\/\/ycorpblog.com\/2009\/11\/10\/wifitimessquare\/\">providing Times Square with Wi-Fi<\/a> for a whole damn year, and Microsoft is partnering with JiWire to put <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwire.com\/press-release\/Jiwire-1073349.html\">Bing-sponsored free Wi-Fi<\/a> in &#8220;hotels and airports.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>[via <a href=\"http:\/\/travel.latimes.com\/daily-deal-blog\/index.php\/google-gives-free-wi-5799\/\">LA Times<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blackbookmag.com\/article\/google-gives-free-wifi-to-airports\/12664\">Black Book<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.seattlepi.com\/microsoft\/archives\/184683.asp?source=rss\">The P-I<\/a> for that last bit]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/lN9N-nzP9qNOBcD8YcBX9fMApFc\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/lN9N-nzP9qNOBcD8YcBX9fMApFc\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/lN9N-nzP9qNOBcD8YcBX9fMApFc\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/lN9N-nzP9qNOBcD8YcBX9fMApFc\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=pmSR1du_Cck:0gpKJWvJSBI:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?i=pmSR1du_Cck:0gpKJWvJSBI:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=pmSR1du_Cck:0gpKJWvJSBI:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?i=pmSR1du_Cck:0gpKJWvJSBI:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=pmSR1du_Cck:0gpKJWvJSBI:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, the spirit of giving arrived a little early this year! For my birthday last month, Google announced it was partnering to offer free Wi-Fi on all Virgin America flights until January 15th. Great, thanks Google, now I have to check the feeds even while flying at 500MPH. But I guess that wasn&#8217;t enough kindness [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}